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GRINNELL, IA—Bard College President Leon Botstein will deliver the Grinnell College Scholars’ Convocation on "The Politics of Art and Culture: Education and Democracy," Thurs., Feb. 11 at 11 a.m. in the Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center, Room 101, on the Grinnell campus.

Botstein, who has served as Bard’s president for more than 30 years, is known as a pioneer for linking higher education to public secondary schools and to prison education. The Bard Prison Initiative, which educates more than 200 incarcerated men and women in New York prisons annually, has served as a model for Grinnell’s own Liberal Arts in Prison Program, a collaborative effort of students, faculty, and staff to provide liberal arts classes to incarcerated adults at the Newton and Mitchellville correctional facilities.

The author of two forthcoming books on “The History of Listening: How Music Creates Meaning” and “Music and Modernism” from Yale University Press, Botstein has published widely in the fields of music, education, history, and culture. He is also an internationally known conductor who has served as music director of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992 and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra since 2003.

Botstein’s lecture is part of Grinnell’s Scholars’ Convocation series and co-sponsored by the Liberal Arts in Prison Program. For more information about the Grinnell prison education program, go to http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/prisonprogram. The Joe Rosenfield ’25 Center is located at 1115 8th Ave. on the Grinnell College campus.